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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6139905" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 320: June 2004part 7/8DM's Toolbox: Johnn is in the mood to cut the crap this month. Sprawling dungeons that are mostly just multiple levels of grey underground tunnels? Not this time. Take all the important rooms and themes that you would then pad out with filler, and condense them down into a best of that has all the excitement in just half a dozen rooms. Of course, putting them right together means you have to think even more about how the monsters interact, and what their body shapes and powers mean for the environment. Ironically, this seems like the kind of advice that's most useful at high level, especially in 3e, where high level monsters take a lot of work to create, and this can cause battles to really drag out, so you need to reduce the number of encounters if you don't want them to be stuck wandering around the same place for months on end. So learn how to prepare and edit before play, and you'll have to do considerably less work in the actual session. Isn't that always the way. Do your work at a time of your choosing, or you have to do it in a rush right before it's needed. As usual, Johnn's advice is solid and sensible, while also having enough of an individual spin to not be boring. The play's the thing: Mearl's contribution this month is another one that he would reuse in an actual book in a couple of years time. Unlike the previous one, which was just fluffy filler advice, this is actually quite interesting, especially as this is another case where I get to examine the rules and see how they refined them before broadcasting them to a wider audience. So yeah, teamwork abilities. These are a cool idea, but have some serious issues, especially if they cost irreplaceable character resources and only work with a specific set of other people. And oh god does he make that mistake here, folks. You've got to have a reasonably high level leader to get in at all, and then everyone has to permanently sacrifice precious skill points to the pool and negotiate exactly what you want to spend them on. This is pretty much the worst possible way to do it, especially in a class and level based game where every level counts and if you fail to optimise at any point, you pay for it aaaall down the line. By contrast, the approach in the PHB II does require some investment in skill points, but they're investments you might well have made anyway, and you aren't bound into a single person always being considered the group leader. So this once again shows that while he might like to play with mechanical design, he really isn't actually that good at it, and needs a good editor to filter out the good ideas from the bad. Still, as both a good idea, and an interestingly bad implementation, this is very worthy of note.</blockquote>

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